Upcoming Courses

This course will introduce students to one of the primary approaches to Religious Studies: the Social Scientific Study of religion as culture. We will begin with a unit examining classical theorists (Durkheim and Weber) and current theoretical developments and exploring some key methodological issues.  In Units Two and Three we will draw on case studies illustrating religious diversity in the United States to refine/apply our understandings of theory and method.  This course is required for the religious studies minor.

 After the events of September 11, many commentators and scholars, wishing to ensure that the American public did not blame Islam for the violence, sought to argue that Islam is a peaceful religion and that violent Muslims are not “real” Muslims. This perspective is based in several problematic assumptions. First, it assumes that there is such a thing as "real (authentic) religion" that exists independent of its cultural expressions; second, it assumes that elites in the mainstream are the only ones who can say what a religion “really” is; third, it assumes that religion is always “good.” This course will seek to problematize those assumptions (about Islam, but about other religions as well). We will look at studies of several different groups (Muslim, Christian, Buddhist) that claim religious justifications for violence and then explore some theoretical perspectives aimed at explaining the relationship between religion and violence.

This course will focus on the content and the interpretation of this Biblical text used by Judaism and Christianity.  Since the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament was written in Hebrew, there will be a study of the interpretation of a Hebrew Scholar, Robert Altar.  There will also be an examination of the various types of interpretations scholars have used to understand the meaning of the contents of the Bible. This examination will consider the three parts of the Bible: Torah, Prophets, and Writings with a concentration on the Moses and David stories. Students will be expected to answer questions and write about the characters and events in the Bible; they will also be expected to address interpretations by scholars of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. 

Ancient India has produced profound mystical and philosophical literature that has been studied reverently over the ages by Hindus in search of religious truth and meaning. It has also produced some powerful religious narratives, stories that many today find just as intriguing, challenging and inspiring as their earlier audiences found them. This course will introduce students to the Hindu religious tradition through direct encounter with selections from its scriptures. Join us to learn about how the primeval man was dismembered to produce this world. Read dialogues between ancient sages concerning the ground of all being. Learn about a hero’s doubts before going to battle and about the answer that the supreme god incarnate, his best friend, gave him at that moment.  Find out about why Rama, another divine incarnation, had to go into exile.       

The Jewish religious tradition stretches from its beginnings in the Hebrew Bible to contemporary manifestations in American Jewish denominations and the State of Israel. Based on the Hebrew Bible and its interpretation by Rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, the history of Judaism is in this course explored as an evolving religious culture. Key ideas, texts and practices are examined in relation to their original historical background and later re-interpretations. A variety of classical and modern texts will provide examples of the multiple genres and voices found in the discourse of Judaism. No prior knowledge is required.    

This is a social and cultural history of Christianity that surveys major intellectual, institutional and popular developments within Christian culture in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. Readings, lectures and discussion sections will address the following: the central issues and debates of the Protestant and Catholic reformations and the new institutions that emerged from these; new forms of discipline and social control, such as the Consistory and the Inquisition; popular religious experience and its many forms of expression; religious dissent,  heresy and witchcraft; the role of religion in the European expansion into new geographical realms; the national and political contexts of religious life in the post-Reformation era; the impact of science and new technologies; the interaction of philosophical developments with religious thought in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe. We will give special attention to the reformations of the sixteenth century, as they greatly impacted the future direction of Christianity in the West, both Protestant and Catholic.    

One of the fascinating aspects of the Hindu religious tradition is the worship of female divinities. In fact, some Hindus envision the highest form of the divine as a supreme female being. This has suggested to some outside observers that the status of women in Indian society might have been higher than their status in other traditional societies. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Neither is the status of women in contemporary India much better.  In this course we will learn about representations of females, both divine and human, in traditional and modern India, asking ourselves: what does it mean for people to worship a female divinity? What do Hindu Goddesses represent? How does the worship of those goddesses relate to the way women have lived in traditional Indian society and or to their role in the culture today?